News feminist philosophers can use

Day: March 16, 2012

Stop Porn Culture invites you to two events this June at the University of San Diego
June 16-17
Anti-Porn Activist Training
Come and get the experience, knowledge, and confidence to speak publicly against pornography in your community. The training will include in-depth presentations/discussions on:
 Hypersexualization and Pop Culture
 Porn and violence against women
 The economics of the porn industry
 First Amendment and free speech issues
 Community organizing against the harms of porn
 Sexualization of children
 Porn And Trafficking
 Practice Q&A sessions
Presenters: Gail Dines, Lierre Keith, Rebecca Whisnant, Lori Watson, Jennifer Johnson and Matt Ezzell and activists from the UK, Norway and Australia
June 18-19
Conference: Contemporary Radical Feminism in the Age of Porn
Scholars from the United States, Australia, Norway and the UK will present papers and roundtable discussions on topics including:
 The Pornification of Representation in Pop Culture
 Heterosexuality and Hook Up Culture
 The Political Economy of Porn
 Sexualized Racism in Pop Culture and Porn
 How “Queer” is “Queer” Porn?
 Radical Feminism and the Right
 Men, Masculinity, and Radical Feminism
 Porn and the Culture of Humiliation
For more information, and to register, please go here.

The US Conference of Catholic bishops has released a statement clarifying their opposition to the Obama administration’s contraception coverage policy (see Huffpost for details). In it, they say that the church’s position is not about “access to contraception”, but rather about religious liberty and the rights of private employers. The church’s position isn’t about access to contraception, they claim, because contraception is “ubiquitous and inexpensive”.

Except it isn’t. In many places it is increasingly hard to come by, thanks to opposition like this. And for many women it is prohibitively expensive if not covered by insurance.

Modes of collectivity play an important role in numerous social and everyday contexts. Collectives form the basis of political practice and engagement as well as of economic and labor relations. Collectivity appears to be a particularly important notion in areas like feminist theorizing; this is especially so once the notion of the subject has been submitted to critical examination, and no longer construed as sovereign and isolated. After all, how might we rethink the notion of community and how can we conceive of collectivity, when the seemingly crucial aspect of collectivization — identity — has become the object of critical study? The conference examines this and related topics.